The Urantia Book
PAPER 54
PROBLEMS OF THE LUCIFER REBELLION
Presented by a Mighty Messenger of experiential survival in the
first system rebellion in the universes of time now attached to
the superuniverse government of Orvonton and acting in this
matter by request of Gabriel of Salvington.
54:0.1 EVOLUTIONARY man finds it difficult
fully to comprehend the significance and to grasp the meanings
of evil, error, sin, and iniquity. Man is slow to perceive that
contrastive perfection and imperfection produce potential evil;
that conflicting truth and falsehood create confusing error;
that the divine endowment of freewill choice eventuates in the
divergent realms of sin and righteousness; that the persistent
pursuit of divinity leads to the kingdom of God as contrasted
with its continuous rejection, which leads to the domains of
iniquity.
54:0.2 The Gods neither create evil nor permit
sin and rebellion. Potential evil is time-existent in a universe
embracing differential levels of perfection meanings and values.
Sin is potential in all realms where imperfect beings are
endowed with the ability to choose between good and evil. The
very conflicting presence of truth and untruth, fact and
falsehood, constitutes the potentiality of error. The deliberate
choice of evil constitutes sin; the willful rejection of truth
is error; the persistent pursuit of sin and error is iniquity.
1. TRUE AND FALSE LIBERTY
54:1.1 Of all the perplexing problems growing
out of the Lucifer rebellion, none has occasioned more
difficulty than the failure of immature evolutionary mortals to
distinguish between true and false liberty.
54:1.2 True liberty is the quest of the ages
and the reward of evolutionary progress. False liberty is the
subtle deception of the error of time and the evil of space.
Enduring liberty is predicated on the reality of justice --
intelligence, maturity, fraternity, and equity.
54:1.3 Liberty is a self-destroying technique
of cosmic existence when its motivation is unintelligent,
unconditioned, and uncontrolled. True liberty is progressively
related to reality and is ever regardful of social equity,
cosmic fairness, universe fraternity, and divine obligations.
54:1.4 Liberty is suicidal when divorced from
material justice, intellectual fairness, social forbearance,
moral duty, and spiritual values. Liberty is nonexistent apart
from cosmic reality, and all personality reality is proportional
to its divinity relationships.
54:1.5 Unbridled self-will and unregulated
self-expression equal unmitigated selfishness, the acme of
ungodliness. Liberty without the associated and ever-increasing
conquest of self is a figment of egoistic mortal imagination.
Self-motivated liberty is a conceptual illusion, a cruel
deception. License masquerading in the garments of liberty is
the forerunner of abject bondage.
54:1.6 True liberty is the associate of
genuine self-respect; false liberty is the consort of
self-admiration. True liberty is the fruit of self-control;
false liberty, the assumption of self-assertion. Self-control
leads to altruistic service; self-admiration tends towards the
exploitation of others for the selfish aggrandizement of such a
mistaken individual as is willing to sacrifice righteous
attainment for the sake of possessing unjust power over his
fellow beings.
54:1.7 Even wisdom is divine and safe only
when it is cosmic in scope and spiritual in motivation.
54:1.8 There is no error greater than that
species of self-deception which leads intelligent beings to
crave the exercise of power over other beings for the purpose of
depriving these persons of their natural liberties. The golden
rule of human fairness cries out against all such fraud,
unfairness, selfishness, and unrighteousness. Only true and
genuine liberty is compatible with the reign of love and the
ministry of mercy.
54:1.9 How dare the self-willed creature
encroach upon the rights of his fellows in the name of personal
liberty when the Supreme Rulers of the universe stand back in
merciful respect for these prerogatives of will and potentials
of personality! No being, in the exercise of his supposed
personal liberty, has a right to deprive any other being of
those privileges of existence conferred by the Creators and duly
respected by all their loyal associates, subordinates, and
subjects.
54:1.10 Evolutionary man may have to contend
for his material liberties with tyrants and oppressors on a
world of sin and iniquity or during the early times of a
primitive evolving sphere, but not so on the morontia worlds or
on the spirit spheres. War is the heritage of early evolutionary
man, but on worlds of normal advancing civilization physical
combat as a technique of adjusting racial misunderstandings has
long since fallen into disrepute.
2. THE THEFT OF LIBERTY
54:2.1 With the Son and in the Spirit did God
project eternal Havona, and ever since has there obtained the
eternal pattern of co-ordinate participation in creation --
sharing. This pattern of sharing is the master design for every
one of the Sons and Daughters of God who go out into space to
engage in the attempt to duplicate in time the central universe
of eternal perfection.
54:2.2 Every creature of every evolving
universe who aspires to do the Father's will is destined to
become the partner of the time-space Creators in this
magnificent adventure of experiential perfection attainment.
Were this not true, the Father would have hardly endowed such
creatures with creative free will, neither would he indwell
them, actually go into partnership with them by means of his own
spirit.
54:2.3 Lucifer's folly was the attempt to do
the nondoable, to short-circuit time in an experiential
universe. Lucifer's crime was the attempted creative
disenfranchisement of every personality in Satania, the
unrecognized abridgment of the creature's personal participation
-- freewill participation -- in the long evolutionary struggle
to attain the status of light and life both individually and
collectively. In so doing, this onetime Sovereign of your system
set the temporal purpose of his own will directly athwart the
eternal purpose of God's will as it is revealed in the bestowal
of free will upon all personal creatures. The Lucifer rebellion
thus threatened the maximum possible infringement of the
freewill choice of the ascenders and servers of the system of
Satania -- a threat forevermore to deprive every one of these
beings of the thrilling experience of contributing something
personal and unique to the slowly erecting monument to
experiential wisdom which will sometime exist as the perfected
system of Satania. Thus does the Lucifer manifesto, masquerading
in the habiliments of liberty, stand forth in the clear light of
reason as a monumental threat to consummate the theft of
personal liberty and to do it on a scale that has been
approached only twice in all the history of Nebadon.
54:2.4 In short, what God had given men and
angels Lucifer would have taken away from them, that is, the
divine privilege of participating in the creation of their own
destinies and of the destiny of this local system of inhabited
worlds.
54:2.5 No being in all the universe has the
rightful liberty to deprive any other being of true liberty, the
right to love and be loved, the privilege of worshiping God and
of serving his fellows.
3. THE TIME LAG OF JUSTICE
54:3.1 The moral will creatures of the
evolutionary worlds are always bothered with the unthinking
question as to why the all-wise Creators permit evil and sin.
They fail to comprehend that both are inevitable if the creature
is to be truly free. The free will of evolving man or exquisite
angel is not a mere philosophic concept, a symbolic ideal. Man's
ability to choose good or evil is a universe reality. This
liberty to choose for oneself is an endowment of the Supreme
Rulers, and they will not permit any being or group of beings to
deprive a single personality in the wide universe of this
divinely bestowed liberty -- not even to satisfy such misguided
and ignorant beings in the enjoyment of this misnamed personal
liberty.
54:3.2 Although conscious and wholehearted
identification with evil (sin) is the equivalent of nonexistence
(annihilation), there must always intervene between the time of
such personal identification with sin and the execution of the
penalty -- the automatic result of such a willful embrace of
evil -- a period of time of sufficient length to allow for such
an adjudication of such an individual's universe status as will
prove entirely satisfactory to all related universe
personalities, and which will be so fair and just as to win the
approval of the sinner himself.
54:3.3 But if this universe rebel against the
reality of truth and goodness refuses to approve the verdict,
and if the guilty one knows in his heart the justice of his
condemnation but refuses to make such confession, then must the
execution of sentence be delayed in accordance with the
discretion of the Ancients of Days. And the Ancients of Days
refuse to annihilate any being until all moral values and all
spiritual realities are extinct, both in the evildoer and in all
related supporters and possible sympathizers.
4. THE MERCY TIME LAG
54:4.1 Another problem somewhat difficult of
explanation in the constellation of Norlatiadek pertains to the
reasons for permitting Lucifer, Satan, and the fallen princes to
work mischief so long before being apprehended, interned, and
adjudicated.
54:4.2 Parents, those who have borne and
reared children, are better able to understand why Michael, a
Creator-father, might be slow to condemn and destroy his own
Sons. Jesus' story of the prodigal son well illustrates how a
loving father can long wait for the repentance of an erring
child.
54:4.3 The very fact that an evil-doing
creature can actually choose to do wrong -- commit sin --
establishes the fact of free-willness and fully justifies any
length delay in the execution of justice provided the extended
mercy might conduce to repentance and rehabilitation.
54:4.4 Most of the liberties which Lucifer
sought he already had; others he was to receive in the future.
All these precious endowments were lost by giving way to
impatience and yielding to a desire to possess what one craves
now and to possess it in defiance of all obligation to respect
the rights and liberties of all other beings composing the
universe of universes. Ethical obligations are innate, divine,
and universal.
54:4.5 There are many reasons known to us why
the Supreme Rulers did not immediately destroy or intern the
leaders of the Lucifer rebellion. There are no doubt still other
and possibly better reasons unknown to us. The mercy features of
this delay in the execution of justice were extended personally
by Michael of Nebadon. Except for the affection of this
Creator-father for his erring Sons, the supreme justice of the
superuniverse would have acted. If such an episode as the
Lucifer rebellion had occurred in Nebadon while Michael was
incarnated on Urantia, the instigators of such evil might have
been instantly and absolutely annihilated.
54:4.6 Supreme justice can act instantly when
not restrained by divine mercy. But the ministry of mercy to the
children of time and space always provides for this time lag,
this saving interval between seedtime and harvest. If the seed
sowing is good, this interval provides for the testing and
upbuilding of character; if the seed sowing is evil, this
merciful delay provides time for repentance and rectification.
This time delay in the adjudication and execution of evildoers
is inherent in the mercy ministry of the seven superuniverses.
This restraint of justice by mercy proves that God is love, and
that such a God of love dominates the universes and in mercy
controls the fate and judgment of all his creatures.
54:4.7 The mercy delays of time are by the
mandate of the free will of the Creators. There is good to be
derived in the universe from this technique of patience in
dealing with sinful rebels. While it is all too true that good
cannot come of evil to the one who contemplates and performs
evil, it is equally true that all things (including evil,
potential and manifest) work together for good to all beings who
know God, love to do his will, and are ascending Paradiseward
according to his eternal plan and divine purpose.
54:4.8 But these mercy delays are not
interminable. Notwithstanding the long delay (as time is
reckoned on Urantia) in adjudicating the Lucifer rebellion, we
may record that, during the time of effecting this revelation,
the first hearing in the pending case of Gabriel vs. Lucifer was
held on Uversa, and soon thereafter there issued the mandate of
the Ancients of Days directing that Satan be henceforth confined
to the prison world with Lucifer. This ends the ability of Satan
to pay further visits to any of the fallen worlds of Satania.
Justice in a mercy-dominated universe may be slow, but it is
certain.
5. THE WISDOM OF DELAY
54:5.1 Of the many reasons known to me as to
why Lucifer and his confederates were not sooner interned or
adjudicated, I am permitted to recite the following:
54:5.2 1. Mercy requires that every wrongdoer
have sufficient time in which to formulate a deliberate and
fully chosen attitude regarding his evil thoughts and sinful
acts.
54:5.3 2. Supreme justice is dominated by a
Father's love; therefore will justice never destroy that which
mercy can save. Time to accept salvation is vouchsafed every
evildoer.
54:5.4 3. No affectionate father is ever
precipitate in visiting punishment upon an erring member of his
family. Patience cannot function independently of time.
54:5.5 4. While wrongdoing is always
deleterious to a family, wisdom and love admonish the upright
children to bear with an erring brother during the time granted
by the affectionate father in which the sinner may see the error
of his way and embrace salvation.
54:5.6 5. Regardless of Michael's attitude
toward Lucifer, notwithstanding his being Lucifer's
Creator-father, it was not in the province of the Creator Son to
exercise summary jurisdiction over the apostate System Sovereign
because he had not then completed his bestowal career, thereby
attaining unqualified sovereignty of Nebadon.
54:5.7 6. The Ancients of Days could have
immediately annihilated these rebels, but they seldom execute
wrongdoers without a full hearing. In this instance they refused
to overrule the Michael decisions.
54:5.8 7. It is evident that Immanuel
counseled Michael to remain aloof from the rebels and allow
rebellion to pursue a natural course of self-obliteration. And
the wisdom of the Union of Days is the time reflection of the
united wisdom of the Paradise Trinity.
54:5.9 8. The Faithful of Days on Edentia
advised the Constellation Fathers to allow the rebels free
course to the end that all sympathy for these evildoers should
be the sooner uprooted in the hearts of every present and future
citizen of Norlatiadek -- every mortal, morontia, or spirit
creature.
54:5.10 9. On Jerusem the personal
representative of the Supreme Executive of Orvonton counseled
Gabriel to foster full opportunity for every living creature to
mature a deliberate choice in those matters involved in the
Lucifer Declaration of Liberty. The issues of rebellion having
been raised, the Paradise emergency adviser of Gabriel portrayed
that, if such full and free opportunity were not given all
Norlatiadek creatures, then would the Paradise quarantine
against all such possible halfhearted or doubt-stricken
creatures be extended in self-protection against the entire
constellation. To keep open the Paradise doors of ascension to
the beings of Norlatiadek, it was necessary to provide for the
full development of rebellion and to insure the complete
determination of attitude on the part of all beings in any way
concerned therewith.
54:5.11 10. The Divine Minister of Salvington
issued as her third independent proclamation a mandate directing
that nothing be done to half cure, cowardly suppress, or
otherwise hide the hideous visage of rebels and rebellion. The
angelic hosts were directed to work for full disclosure and
unlimited opportunity for sin-expression as the quickest
technique of achieving the perfect and final cure of the plague
of evil and sin.
54:5.12 11. An emergency council of ex-mortals
consisting of Mighty Messengers, glorified mortals who had had
personal experience with like situations, together with their
colleagues, was organized on Jerusem. They advised Gabriel that
at least three times the number of beings would be led astray if
arbitrary or summary methods of suppression were attempted. The
entire Uversa corps of counselors concurred in advising Gabriel
to permit the rebellion to take its full and natural course,
even if it should require a million years to wind up the
consequences.
54:5.13 12. Time, even in a universe of time,
is relative: If a Urantia mortal of average length of life
should commit a crime which precipitated world-wide pandemonium,
and if he were apprehended, tried, and executed within two or
three days of the commission of the crime, would it seem a long
time to you? And yet that would be nearer a comparison with the
length of Lucifer's life even if his adjudication, now begun,
should not be completed for a hundred thousand Urantia years.
The relative lapse of time from the viewpoint of Uversa, where
the litigation is pending, could be indicated by saying that the
crime of Lucifer was being brought to trial within two and a
half seconds of its commission. From the Paradise viewpoint the
adjudication is simultaneous with the enactment.
54:5.14 There are an equal number of reasons
for not arbitrarily stopping the Lucifer rebellion which would
be partially comprehensible to you, but which I am not permitted
to narrate. I may inform you that on Uversa we teach forty-eight
reasons for permitting evil to run the full course of its own
moral bankruptcy and spiritual extinction. I doubt not that
there are just as many additional reasons not known to me.
6. THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE
54:6.1 Whatever the difficulties evolutionary
mortals may encounter in their efforts to understand the Lucifer
rebellion, it should be clear to all reflective thinkers that
the technique of dealing with the rebels is a vindication of
divine love. The loving mercy extended to the rebels does seem
to have involved many innocent beings in trials and
tribulations, but all these distraught personalities may
securely depend upon the all-wise Judges to adjudicate their
destinies in mercy as well as justice.
54:6.2 In all their dealings with intelligent
beings, both the Creator Son and his Paradise Father are love
dominated. It is impossible to comprehend many phases of the
attitude of the universe rulers toward rebels and rebellion --
sin and sinners -- unless it be remembered that God as a Father
takes precedence over all other phases of Deity manifestation in
all the dealings of divinity with humanity. It should also be
recalled that the Paradise Creator Sons are all mercy motivated.
54:6.3 If an affectionate father of a large
family chooses to show mercy to one of his children guilty of
grievous wrongdoing, it may well be that the extension of mercy
to this misbehaving child will work a temporary hardship upon
all the other and well-behaved children. Such eventualities are
inevitable; such a risk is inseparable from the reality
situation of having a loving parent and of being a member of a
family group. Each member of a family profits by the righteous
conduct of every other member; likewise must each member suffer
the immediate time-consequences of the misconduct of every other
member. Families, groups, nations, races, worlds, systems,
constellations, and universes are relationships of association
which possess individuality; and therefore does every member of
any such group, large or small, reap the benefits and suffer the
consequences of the rightdoing and the wrongdoing of all other
members of the group concerned.
54:6.4 But one thing should be made clear: If
you are made to suffer the evil consequences of the sin of some
member of your family, some fellow citizen or fellow mortal,
even rebellion in the system or elsewhere -- no matter what you
may have to endure because of the wrongdoing of your associates,
fellows, or superiors -- you may rest secure in the eternal
assurance that such tribulations are transient afflictions. None
of these fraternal consequences of misbehavior in the group can
ever jeopardize your eternal prospects or in the least degree
deprive you of your divine right of Paradise ascension and God
attainment.
54:6.5 And there is compensation for these
trials, delays, and disappointments which invariably accompany
the sin of rebellion. Of the many valuable repercussions of the
Lucifer rebellion which might be named, I will only call
attention to the enhanced careers of those mortal ascenders, the
Jerusem citizens, who, by withstanding the sophistries of sin,
placed themselves in line for becoming future Mighty Messengers,
fellows of my own order. Every being who stood the test of that
evil episode thereby immediately advanced his administrative
status and enhanced his spiritual worth.
54:6.6 At first the Lucifer upheaval appeared
to be an unmitigated calamity to the system and to the universe.
Gradually benefits began to accrue. With the passing of
twenty-five thousand years of system time (twenty thousand years
of Urantia time), the Melchizedeks began to teach that the good
resulting from Lucifer's folly had come to equal the evil
incurred. The sum of evil had by that time become almost
stationary, continuing to increase only on certain isolated
worlds, while the beneficial repercussions continued to multiply
and extend out through the universe and superuniverse, even to
Havona. The Melchizedeks now teach that the good resulting from
the Satania rebellion is more than a thousand times the sum of
all the evil.
54:6.7 But such an extraordinary and
beneficent harvest of wrongdoing could only be brought about by
the wise, divine, and merciful attitude of all of Lucifer's
superiors, extending from the Constellation Fathers on Edentia
to the Universal Father on Paradise. The passing of time has
enhanced the consequential good to be derived from the Lucifer
folly; and since the evil to be penalized was quite fully
developed within a comparatively short time, it is apparent that
the all-wise and farseeing universe rulers would be certain to
extend the time in which to reap increasingly beneficial
results. Regardless of the many additional reasons for delaying
the apprehension and adjudication of the Satania rebels, this
one gain would have been enough to explain why these sinners
were not sooner interned, and why they have not been adjudicated
and destroyed.
54:6.8 Shortsighted and time-bound mortal
minds should be slow to criticize the time delays of the
farseeing and all-wise administrators of universe affairs.
54:6.9 One error of human thinking respecting
these problems consists in the idea that all evolutionary
mortals on an evolving planet would choose to enter upon the
Paradise career if sin had not cursed their world. The ability
to decline survival does not date from the times of the Lucifer
rebellion. Mortal man has always possessed the endowment of
freewill choice regarding the Paradise career.
54:6.10 As you ascend in the survival
experience, you will broaden your universe concepts and extend
your horizon of meanings and values; and thus will you be able
the better to understand why such beings as Lucifer and Satan
are permitted to continue in rebellion. You will also better
comprehend how ultimate (if not immediate) good can be derived
from time-limited evil. After you attain Paradise, you will
really be enlightened and comforted when you listen to the
superaphic philosophers discuss and explain these profound
problems of universe adjustment. But even then, I doubt that you
will be fully satisfied in your own minds. At least I was not
even when I had thus attained the acme of universe philosophy. I
did not achieve a full comprehension of these complexities until
after I had been assigned to administrative duties in the
superuniverse, where by actual experience I have acquired
conceptual capacity adequate for the comprehension of such
many-sided problems in cosmic equity and spiritual philosophy.
As you ascend Paradiseward, you will increasingly learn that
many problematic features of universe administration can only be
comprehended subsequent to the acquirement of increased
experiential capacity and to the achievement of enhanced
spiritual insight. Cosmic wisdom is essential to the
understanding of cosmic situations.
54:6.11
Presented by a Mighty Messenger of experiential survival in the
first system rebellion in the universes of time now attached to
the superuniverse government of Orvonton and acting in this
matter by request of Gabriel of Salvington.
